Letter: Women don't vote for looks Beware foolish assumptions

Lesley Abdela
Sunday 24 November 1996 00:02 GMT
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I am as irritated as Geraldine Curtis by the assumption that women vote for men on their looks (Letters, 17 November). Women vote for the party which appears to accommodate their needs the best - or, as has been the case, the least worst. Why else, in the presidential election of 1960, would more women in America have voted for an ill-at- ease, pallid, balding and unshaven Richard Nixon than for the handsome, hirsute, confident, athletic Jack Kennedy?

There is a "women's vote" but it is issue oriented and increasingly targeted. It is foolish for any party to make assumptions about why women vote the way they do, rather than discovering what they would vote for.

Lesley Abdela

London W1

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